Automatic upgrade but will my line take it?

I'm aware that virgin customers on 1Mb lines are being upgraded to 2Mb - are
there any tools on the net that I can use to see whether my line will be
able to take this new speed or are all such tools just guess work (I know
the only real way is for an engineer to run a test on my specific cabling,
but I'd like to see ahead of time if its obvious I'm not going to get those
speeds).

TIA

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I'm aware that virgin customers on 1Mb lines are being upgraded to 2Mb - are
> there any tools on the net that I can use to see whether my line will be
> able to take this new speed or are all such tools just guess work (I know
> the only real way is for an engineer to run a test on my specific cabling,
> but I'd like to see ahead of time if its obvious I'm not going to get those
> speeds).

Do you have an ADSL modem that reports Noise margin or SNR on the
downstream connection?

If you have, then look at the SNR margin and subtract 6dB from it, if
the result is above above 10dB you should have no trouble.

--

Brian Morrison

please observe reply-to address

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 09:13:08 +0000 (UTC), <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>- are
>there any tools on the net that I can use to see whether my line will be
>able to take this new speed

www.bt.com/broadband will tell you if its going to happen - if it
doesn't offer 2M then you're out of luck.

Phil
--
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices, see
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist...&Board=tiscali

AOL - the unlimited ISP of choice for heavy downloaders.

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, Brian Morrison wrote:

> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>> I'm aware that virgin customers on 1Mb lines are being upgraded to 2Mb -
>> are there any tools on the net that I can use to see whether my line will
>> be able to take this new speed or are all such tools just guess work (I
>> know the only real way is for an engineer to run a test on my specific
>> cabling, but I'd like to see ahead of time if its obvious I'm not going
>> to get those speeds).
>
> Do you have an ADSL modem that reports Noise margin or SNR on the
> downstream connection?
>
> If you have, then look at the SNR margin and subtract 6dB from it, if
> the result is above above 10dB you should have no trouble.
>
That doesn't stop them upgrading the line though. My router had an SNR of
-4dB this morning, my link was upgraded last night. It didn't work,
needless to say, although that's a modem fault, not a line fault. The
back-up modem is fine at 2Mb.
--
Dave
mail da (E-Mail Removed) (without the space)
http://www.llondel.org/
So many gadgets, so little time...

Dave {Reply Address in.sig} wrote:
> In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, Brian Morrison wrote:
>
>
>>(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>>
>>>I'm aware that virgin customers on 1Mb lines are being upgraded to 2Mb -
>>>are there any tools on the net that I can use to see whether my line will
>>>be able to take this new speed or are all such tools just guess work (I
>>>know the only real way is for an engineer to run a test on my specific
>>>cabling, but I'd like to see ahead of time if its obvious I'm not going
>>>to get those speeds).
>>
>>Do you have an ADSL modem that reports Noise margin or SNR on the
>>downstream connection?
>>
>>If you have, then look at the SNR margin and subtract 6dB from it, if
>>the result is above above 10dB you should have no trouble.
>>
>
> That doesn't stop them upgrading the line though. My router had an SNR of
> -4dB this morning, my link was upgraded last night. It didn't work,
> needless to say, although that's a modem fault, not a line fault. The
> back-up modem is fine at 2Mb.

I don't quite know what happens with upgrades, in my case although my
line has enough SNR to support 2 Mbps BT's database shows me as needing
an engineer visit for 1 Mbps and no 2Mbps possible at all. I'm expecting
my ISP to upgrade me to 1Mbps some time in the next month or so, we'll
see what happens.

Normally ADSL modems don't retrain until the SNR drops very low and they
lose sync, or carrier vanishes completely. Quite why yours decided to
fall over and report those readings I don't know.

I've seen a few instances where my link would cycle through trying to
start PPPoA and get to the authentication stage then time out and return
to the beginning. This seemed to happen after an interruption of service
of a particular type where something in the BT backhaul needed to be
reset and the only way I could get it to happen was to reboot the router
and let the whole setup run from the no carrier condition.

But apart from that in 18 months the reliability has been very good,
with no more than an hour or two of total outage time.

--

Brian Morrison

please observe reply-to address